


Always with the Poisons

by Glinda



Series: Siblings of Stormhold [2]
Category: Stardust (2007)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-17
Updated: 2009-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-04 12:10:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She cannot be Queen; so he'll just have to be King.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always with the Poisons

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wanted to have a little aside in [First Loves; Second Chances](http://archiveofourown.org/works/29866) with Una teaching Septimus what she knows about poisons because he is the youngest and she wants to protect him. It didn't fit so I wrote it up separately and it grew into a story in its own right.

In any other kingdom only civil war, family disaster or really dedicated homicide could have made Septimus king. In any other kingdom, as the youngest son he would only have had to worry about being held ransom, married off for an alliance or dying in battle vying for his father's attention. In this kingdom he must either murder his way to becoming king or die. He is relatively safe in his early years, it being considered bad form to kill your siblings before they come of age. Not that that traditionally stops anyone in their family but his brothers fear their only sister's wrath. Their father encourages them and their mother disapproves but Una will make you suffer, and see that you live to regret it. No brutal murders of people under the age of twelve, she declares and they behave. Well try at least. They each have their supporters, and surely _they_ aren't bound by such prohibitions. A shame then that they aren't very good, Una doesn't object to her brothers killing other people who were trying to kill them.

Septimus is six years old the first time someone attempts to kill him. Waking in the night with terrible cramps and instinct tells him this is not food poisoning but the more traditional kind. There are few in the castle he can trust to ask for help. Not even his mother will be much help if he wants to live, she will wail and curse and grieve but she cannot cure him. So it is to Una he goes, describing his symptoms in concise calm sentences, feeling sweat beading on his forehead despite how cold the night is. He will remember being led down long corridors as she sought books and ingredient, working carefully, serious and calm. In dark moments years from now he will still be able to recall the image of her bent over her concoction, brow furrowed in concentration, the dark blue of her nightdress, candlelight making her look older than her fifteen years. The warmth of her hug and the tremble in her voice revealing her fear once she was sure he was safe. In the morning his older brothers try not to cower visibly from her wrath, and for a while even the number of mysteriously falling axes and candelabras are reduced. He takes to haunting her steps as she studies and plans, negotiating the poisonous labyrinth of politics that they inhabit with a grace he comes to admire. He is eager for knowledge and she has much to teach. She teaches him about poisons, teaching him the effects and antidotes the way their father had taught her, to keep them safe from harm. Hours of studying power and how to wield it without seeming to have any at all. It will serve him well in years to come, blending into the background, leaving the showy posturing to his brothers, let them kill each other off, leaving the throne for him. A good plan and one Una approves of when he shares it with her. He grows increasingly certain that, of all of them, she would be the best ruler and if it can't be her, well it'll just have to be him. Blue becomes his favourite colour, the colour of safety, of success, of the Queen who will never be.

He is eleven the first time he kills someone, pushing a couple of attackers twice his age and size out of a window really doesn't count. It is an accident of a sort, he hadn't intended to kill Sextus, the poison was meant for Primus as revenge for having had someone try to poison him all those years before. Oddly enough the blame falls on Quartus who denies it vehemently, but Septimus doesn't mind. He is too young to be considered a threat and he intends to keep it that way. Enjoying instead the irritation of Secondus who, for all his melodramatic efforts with axes, has been beaten to the first fratricide of their generation. That evening Septimus finds Una in her rooms, there are clothes and books everywhere, maps and runes cover the table and she is contemplating a fine dagger he knows was their father's gift to her on her eighteenth birthday. She freezes for a moment as he enters, returning to her packing once she realises whom it is. She is leaving he realises, and when he opens his mouth to protest, she whirls on him grief and rage writ large across her face. She cannot possibly know what he has done; yet she does. Before she had only feared what might be done to him, now she fears for what he might do. He had been her ally against the madness of their family, she tells him, the only one she could trust or confide in despite the age gap. Now that trust is broken and he knows with a cold certainty that that can never be repaired. The only person he has ever allowed himself to care for is lost to him, and he can blame no one but himself. Her eyes are free of tears and he briefly wonders if anyone other than him has ever been allowed to see her cry, if anyone else ever will. He saddles the fastest of his horses for her and does not bring news of her leaving until he is certain she is far enough away to not be found unless she wishes to be.

He does not kill anyone who isn't actively attempting to kill him for twenty years. Until the old king is dying and it is something of a pleasure to finally put an end to Secondus' posturing after all these years. He basks in his father's approval for a brief moment and ignores the stab of guilt the discussion of Una brings up. He has searched far and wide for their sister, though none of his brothers know of his questing, Una is lost to them. He looks at his remaining brothers, officious Primus and ineffectual Tertius and knows what he must do. It was a good plan that they made all those years ago just a shame Secondus couldn't have been efficient and just killed off the competition years ago. Stormhold deserves better than this pair of cretins, it's practically a public service. He sets off on his quest, with another brother dead, and if his dreams are haunted by a pair of accusing brown eyes, well that's the price he must pay.

He will be king, the best king Stormhold has ever seen, he will end the madness and bring a new kind of magic to their line. Even if he has to rip out the heart of a star to do it.


End file.
